Back on the bus to Berlin we headed straight into a driving
tour to see the sights. Our first stop
was the Berlin wall and it was breathtaking.
The artwork is amazing on the longest stretch of the original standing
wall, the only section that has such artwork.
After a short trip around the city we headed back to the hostel to have
an organised dinner. We first started
with soup which was a traditional potato and wurst (sausage) soup. Similar to the consistency of potato and
leek, the flavour was amazing however the sausage was awful! Imagine tiny
little frankfurts cut up and added to your soup, then imagine the frankfurts
being the worst you have eaten, hopefully you can understand why I only tasted
one piece of wurst and then avoided the rest!
Time to move on to main and the look on my TopDeck trip leaders face was
priceless when they served us another pork schnitzel. I must admit the look on everyone’s face,
mine included, basically said “really....another schnitzel!?” But being the
hungry travellers we are that sure didn’t stop us from digging in. This was probably the worst of the three
schnitzels (or perhaps I am just sick of them!) as it was very rubbery and
seemed rather heavy. The salad was great
but perhaps a little less dressing would have been better. It was time now to try one of Germany’s
famous dishes, apple strudel. Apparently
it is meant to be the best in the world, but you can imagine my confusion when
it was served cold. Perhaps not a great
start to German cuisine, but I am putting it down to the fact that it was a
hostel restaurant and there were three top deck groups to feed, meaning around
150 hungry people.
A night to catch up on emails was just what I needed to
prepare for our walking tour in the morning.
Our guide took us on a Third Reich walking tour to see a large number of
the historical sights around Berlin. The
tour was approximately 2 hours where we saw the Brandenburg gate, the
Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial (which is an amazing stone block memorial
with 2711 different shaped and sized blocks representing unique individuals), Hitler’s
Bunker, Tapographie of Terror, more of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie
to name a few. Our guide was very good
and provided us with a lot of history around the Berlin Wall and the
reunification of Berlin which I found very interesting. We ended the tour at Checkpoint Charlie where
we took the opportunity to have a snack.
It was time to try out some cheesecake as I am yet to try this in
another country and it did not disappoint.
I must also comment on how soccer or ‘football’ mad this
country is. All of my photos have some
kind of scaffolding or speakers in the background as the set up for the Euro
Cup was amazing. The streets are all
blocked off and large screens are placed in town squares and parks for the
entire community to come down and watch the game together. I would have loved to have been in the city
when Germany played as I am sure the atmosphere is amazing, however they played
the night before our arrival.
We spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon
going back to some of the major sights and had a packed lunch (ham and salad
rolls) overlooking the Berlin Wall. We then headed back to the hostel for a
well earned nap before heading to our themed ‘I love Berlin’ night. Before we began the night, we needed to
recharge our batteries with some more food!
With the risk of being served another pork schnitzel too high, we
decided to leave Europe for an hour or two and head to India and wow this was
sure the right decision. The amount of
food is always overwhelming but the flavours were amazing and possibly one of
the best Indian restaurants I have been to.
I opted for chicken jalfrezi and it was delicious, the chicken was
cooked to perfection and melted in your mouth and the spices were a well needed
change. I have however never been served cauliflower in an Indian dish before
and it was surprisingly nice. We of
course washed down all of this food with a few refreshing cocktails which was
served with fresh fruit making it seem a little healthier. All of this food as well as a cocktail cost us less than €15 each
and I could probably rave about this meal for weeks but when I return to
Germany I will need to try a few more traditional dishes including the famous
currywurst, which is served all through the street at hot dog type stands, or
some of the 4000 different types of breads that Germany is known for.
As our trip is drawing to a close we are now heading along the world
famous autobahn where there is no speed limit, yet the traffic is at crawling
pace, with our final destination of our TopDeck tour being Amsterdam,
Netherlands. Time to grab some shut eye
x
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